The short answer
Reactivate old solar leads by messaging everyone who enquired or was quoted and never bought, with a short, direct, non-promotional message that gives them an easy way to say no. The cost is the messages, the leads are already yours, and most solar companies have never once done it.
- 01A three-year-old solar company is sitting on hundreds of unconverted enquiries.
- 02Short and direct beats a campaign. The best message reads like a person remembered them.
- 03Exclude anyone who opted out, anyone who installed, and anyone who complained.
- 04Run it once properly, then let ongoing nurture handle it from then on.
This is the highest return-per-hour thing in this entire blog and most solar companies have never done it. Every person who asked for a quote and did not buy wanted solar. Many of them never bought from anybody, because solar gets postponed rather than rejected.
They are already in your system. They cost nothing to reach. And the average solar company has hundreds of them sitting in a status called Lost.
Who should you include?
| Group | Include? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Quoted, never proceeded | Yes, first priority | Highest intent. They got as far as numbers |
| Enquired, never reached | Yes | Real intent, contact failed rather than interest |
| Booked, never sat | Yes | They committed time once |
| Said not yet | Yes, especially | They told you to come back. This is you coming back |
| Chose a competitor | Yes, carefully | A share never proceeded at all |
| Installed with a competitor | No | Offer battery or EV instead, as a separate campaign |
| Opted out or complained | No, ever | Exclude permanently and check the list twice |
What should you send?
Short, direct, from a person, and with an easy exit. The best-performing reactivation messages do not look like campaigns at all, which is precisely why they work.
Hi Sarah, it is Dan from Volt Solar. You asked us about panels back in 2024 and it never went ahead. No pitch: I am just going through old enquiries and wondered whether solar is still on your list or whether I should take you off ours.
The question at the end is the whole message
Two things make this work. It admits it is an old enquiry rather than pretending to be a fresh thought, which is disarming and honest. And it offers to remove them, which is easy to reply to and makes replying feel low-stakes.
Running the campaign
- 01
Clean and segment the list
Remove opt-outs and duplicates. Split by how they left: quoted, never reached, said not yet. Each gets a slightly different first line.
- 02
Send in batches
Fifty to a hundred a day, not the whole list at once. Replies arrive quickly and you need to be able to answer them properly. A batch nobody can handle is worse than no batch.
- 03
Text first, email second
Where you have consent and a mobile number, text wins by a wide margin. Email for the rest, plain text, from a person. See SMS marketing for solar companies.
- 04
Answer every reply within minutes
Including the no thanks ones, politely, and remove them immediately. The replies come fast and the goodwill is in the handling.
- 05
Move the rest into nurture
Anyone who did not reply goes into the monthly sequence rather than back into the Lost pile. See solar lead nurturing.
What should you expect?
Replies within hours rather than days, because the message reads like a person. A meaningful share will be no thanks, which is a genuine result: it cleans your database and it is the honest answer to a direct question.
The value is concentrated in a small number of people who were always going to buy eventually and had simply not been asked since. At solar job values, a handful of those pays for a year of most marketing.
One thing to be clear about: this works once per database. After it, the pipeline comes from ongoing nurture rather than from another reactivation blast, which is why the fifth step above matters more than it looks. See solar database reactivation campaign for the fuller version.
Doing it lawfully
- Check you have a basis to contact them. They enquired, which usually gives you one, but rules differ by jurisdiction and by how long ago it was.
- Honour every opt-out immediately, including informal ones, and record it.
- Identify yourself in every message.
- Do not text purchased or scraped lists. This campaign is for your own enquiries only.
- Keep the records: when they enquired, what you sent, and when.
The ongoing version, once the one-off campaign is done
Automatic customer returnsStop reading, start booking
Volt builds and runs the system this article describes: the site, the follow-up, the inbox and the review funnel, for $297 a month.
No contracts. Cancel anytime.
Common questions
- How old can a solar lead be and still be worth contacting?
- Three or four years is still worth a message, because solar decisions get postponed rather than abandoned. Beyond that the contact details decay and the response rate falls sharply, though it never reaches zero.
- Will old leads be annoyed to hear from me?
- Very few, when the message is honest about being an old enquiry and offers an easy way out. The ones who are annoyed will tell you, you remove them, and your list is cleaner than it was.
- How many leads do I need for this to be worth doing?
- Around a hundred makes it worth an afternoon. At solar job values a single closed job from the exercise pays for it many times over, and the list cleaning is worth something on its own.
